Quality Engineering Manager

Quality Engineering Manager

We are looking for a Quality Engineering Manager to directly manage a team of 5-8 quality engineers, own our test automation strategy, and embed quality into the full development lifecycle. This is a player-coach role - you will be embedded into a sprint team and expected to carry an individual contributor workload alongside your management responsibilities, including testing tickets, regression, and hands-on automation work.

This requires strong technical depth, critical thinking, CI/CD integration, and application of AI-assisted testing - combined with direct people management authority including hiring, performance management, and career development.

Responsibilities

Quality Leadership

* Define, lead, and audit progress on quality initiatives aligned to project and product needs.

* Drive products from inception to release through technical and thought leadership on quality.

* Collaborate cross-functionally to improve frameworks, methodologies, and processes for test planning, execution, and reporting.

* Lead standards-based compliance and process improvement efforts as needed.

Test Automation & AI

* Bring an AI-first mindset to all aspects of the test engineering lifecycle - from test design and generation to execution, triage, and reporting.

* Design, build, and maintain automation frameworks from scratch for large-scale, cross-platform applications for API and or UI testing - including custom C#, Playwright or UFT frameworks.

* Incorporate AI tools into test automation workflows - including AI-assisted test generation, self-healing frameworks, and intelligent test selection.

* Adopt emerging AI/ML testing tools to improve coverage and reduce manual effort.

CI/CD Integration

* Integrate automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Azure Dev Ops, Git Hub Actions, Jenkins) to enable fast feedback loops.

* Define and enforce quality gates within deployment pipelines to prevent regressions from reaching production.

* Monitor pipeline health, test flakiness, and execution times; drive improvements continuously.

Testing & Defect Management

* Embedded on a sprint team as an individual contributor - actively pick up and execute testing tickets, adding automated tests, create and review pull requests, regression testing and exploratory testing alongside the team.

* Set and enforce standards for exploratory, functional, and regression testing across the team.

* Oversee root cause analysis on defects; ensure clear, consistent bug reporting practices.

* Work with engineers and support teams to identify, triage, prioritize, and drive resolution of defects.

People Management

* Directly manage 5-8 quality engineers - this includes hiring, onboarding, along with performance management, having difficult conversations and compensation input.

* Set and communicate team and individual objectives and KPIs; hold the team accountable to them.

* Conduct structured performance reviews; provide timely, constructive feedback and address underperformance directly by assessing individual skills, identifying gaps, and building targeted development plans and coaching programs.

* Set and communicate team and individual objectives and KPIs; hold the team accountable to them.

* Recognize and retain high performers; actively manage team health and morale.

Required Qualifications

* 5+ years in software quality engineering

* 2+ years as a direct people manager with a team of 4 or more direct reports (preferred)

* Hands-on experience with test automation (.net/. net core/ C#/ Api Testing/ UI testing with Playwright/Selenium/Cypress preferred) and in integrating automated tests into CI/CD pipelines.

* Practical experience using AI tools in test automation workflows.

* Proven track record of conducting performance reviews, making compensation recommendations, and managing full employee lifecycle including difficult conversations.

* Strong root cause analysis skills across complex, cross-functional and cross-product defects.

Preferred Qualifications

* Healthcare IT or regulated software experience (HIPAA, ONC, FDA).

* Experience with NUnit, xUnit, or Playwright in .NET environments.

* Familiarity with AI tools and testing platforms…